Originally Posted by
Steve Marshall
Agreed, I won't know the hardness of the scrounged lead. And until I cast, I won't know the hardness of the bullet. And once I do know, then what? Do I strive to blend and arrive at 10.873 BHN? Or, more likely, I'll end up with , say, 9BHN- 12 BHN. From my, admittedly, limited comprehension, that will probably be close enough for government work.
As to "other" pencils? My gut says, since we really don't know what our alloy is and since I can vary the hardness of my bullets via air-hardening, water quenching and heat treating, the hardness of the pencil probably doesn't matter too much, as long as they are somewhat linear like the Staedtlers, as it is only a tool for the individual caster to make comparative readings.
Something further I would like to know, is blending different hardnesses to arrive at another hardness, were I to combine some 5ish BNH to some 15ish BNH, do I arrive at 10ish BNH? In other words is it a linear process and if I add 1 hardness to another can I divide by two to get a resultant hardness or is there some kind of formula to derive the result?
Thanks